With the issuance of the notice of proposed rule-making (NPRM) for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications by the United States national highway traffic safety administration (NHTSA), widespread deployment of vehicular communications and networking is coming closer to reality. Vehicle-to-vehicle technology enables vehicles ranging from cars to trucks and buses to trains to send and receive basic safety messages (BSMs) to and from other vehicles. Vehicle-to-vehicle communications can help save lives, prevent injuries, and ease traffic congestion. Rapid acceptance of the technology allows large portions of the public to benefit from the improved safety supported by vehicle-to-vehicle communications.
However, with the introduction of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technologies, it is expected that many safety and non-safety applications will be deployed within the vehicle and will request information from a network. Many of the applications (for example, location based services (LBS)) will be deployed using servers that are deployed within a wider, fixed infrastructure. This deployment presents a single point of attack for potential adversaries. Privacy is a significant concern for vehicle-to-vehicle communication and can impact the rapid acceptance of this technology.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.